And The Lame Excuse of the Year Award Goes To:

This moron who ran a red light and killed somebody:

Some communities began installing cool-burning LEDs more than a decade ago, and it wasn’t long before drivers started complaining about the problem.

Illinois authorities said that during a storm in April, 34-year-old Lisa Richter could see she had a green light and began making a left turn. A driver coming from the opposite direction did not realize the stoplight was obscured by snow and plowed into Richter’s vehicle, killing her.

“Would the accident have occurred if the lights had been clear? I would be willing to bet not,” Oswego police Detective Rob Sherwood said.
(Full to MSNBC article: here)

You didn’t REALIZE it was OBSCURED BY SNOW!? I mean common sense: you didn’t LOOK AT IT! It’s not the snow’s fault you’re a moron.

This entire article is WTF worthy. You can’t blame a stoplight not working for causing accidents. You STOP, LOOK, THEN GO when you’re clear to. Heaven forbid we all start taking responsibility for our own actions.

And this concludes my premenstrual rant for the day.

In 10 minutes or less.

Kumo: NOM!

Danica: Oh yeah?!

Danica: I’ll bit your tail!

Kumo: I’ll bite your face!


Danica: YOU’RE GOING DOWN!

Kumo: AND YOU’RE GOING TO FLY!

Danica: Wait, what time is it? Isn’t it naptime?
Kumo: We woke up 15 minutes ago.
Danica: We’re 5 minutes late for naptime!
Kumo: *already snoring*

Reintroducing Danica “Tauntaun” Hirsch

Danica is really noisy when she plays so Kumo has started making a lot of noise when he plays with her. Ben thinks she sounds like a Tauntaun.

I like having the iPhone around for taking quick vids like this. The quality isn’t nearly as good as the flip but it’s convenient. I just need to start remembering to grab the flip more.

Introducing Danica

We got Kumo a sister. We’ve wanted to get him a playmate for awhile now and had been looking at puppies and dogs online and decided last Saturday to drive to the Salinas shelter where we got Kumo just to look and see if we could find a puppy. We tried two other dogs first, a 10 month old Mastif and a tiny lab mix puppy. The Mastif was SO CUTE and already as big as Kumo but when we brought him into the pen next to where we had Kumo, he was REALLY aggressively barking and growling at Kumo. Then we tried the puppy which was a COMPLETE SPAZ and spent 10 minutes chewing anything that came within 10 feet of his mouth. And peeing. And barking.

Then we tried Danica and she came in the pen and crawled in between Ben’s legs and put on her cute face. And we were hooked. We introduced her to Kumo and they did pretty well together. There were two moments, one in the pen and one in the room before we left, where she got a bit snippy with Kumo but I think it was just because Kumo was really excited and once he got a little too close to her neutering incision. But the girl has spunk for sure, that was clear right away. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she ends up being the alpha even though we have taken steps like feeding him first, allowing him to walk in front of her and out the doors before her. But I just figure they’ll work it all out eventually.

We weren’t prepared to be bringing a puppy home THAT DAY but we had pretty much everything we needed left over from Kumo anyway. Crates, toys, bowl… all we needed was a NAME. When we adopted Kumo we had to wait four days for him to be microchipped, fixed and the last of his shots and it took the entire four days to come up with his name.

So on the way home we started throwing out names. We knew just from meeting her that it would have to be a strong, sassy female name. Ben threw out Danica right away and I liked it but we didn’t want to jump at the first name.

Me: What about Seven of Nine!
Ben: Well we’d have to call her Seven, not Seven of Nine.
Me: What about Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One.
Ben: *sigh*
Me: What?! I’m just throwing stuff out there!

And then Cassidy’s head exploded from the geek overdose. What can I say, I love my Star Trek.

We ended up going with Danica because it fits our theme. Our cat Hans’ full name is Hans Devise Stuck after the Hans Device, a racing neck brace, and Hans Stuck, a famous German race car driver. Kumo is named after the Kumho brand of racing tires. We dropped the ‘h’ so it would be easier for the kids in his Kindergarten class to spell his name.

So Danica just made sense.

So, blog friends, welcome our newest family member Danica Hirsch:

The first thing you lose on a diet is your sense of humor.

I’ve lost 15 pounds. I’m not sure exactly where that 15 pounds went. My pants feel a little less painted on in the morning but other than that I’m stumped. Knowing my luck 5 of it came off my feet and the other 10 were just cleaned thoroughly out of my colon. We’ve been eating very “clean”. Whole grains, lean meats and LOTS AND LOTS of fresh veggies and fruit. Over the next few weeks I’m going to feature some of the recipes here because most of them have actually been much tastier than I’d think something good for you should taste. Gone are the days of rice cakes and plain egg whites that’s for sure.

Of course, Ben has less weight to lose overall but has already lost more than me. He’s at 20 pounds lost. It’s totally awesome for him, he’s doing so well. But certainly there is some twisted higher being out there that was drop kicked in the face by a woman at some point and now we’re all paying the consequence by having to do twice as much work to lose the same amount of weight.

We’ve also been hitting the gym pretty regularly. It’s amazing to me how in two months I can do the same workout on the treadmill but my heart rate average has gone down 40 beats per minute. FORTY. BEATS. PER. MINUTE. I thought for sure during that first workout that my heart was going to commit mutiny. He was going to band together with my spleen and gallbladder and find the quickest exit possible. I’m not sure how important a spleen or gallbladder is but I do know that I’d be kinda screwed without my heart.

Today I made an appointment with a personal trainer that I routinely see TRY TO MURDER people at the gym. Tonight a man just WALKED OUT in the middle of his hour. WALKED OUT! Dude is INTENSE. And I’m really really looking forward to it. Also, I’m wondering how hard I’d actually have to hit him to knock him out to run away. Maybe kicking hm would be better. I guess we’ll find out Wednesday.

And The Beat Goes On

I’m back. Well, as much as I can be.

Because I needed a change of pace, I decided it was about time to revamp things a little around here and have put up a brand spankin’ new theme. It had been well over a year since I had really done an overhaul to the site and now seemed like as good a time as any. I even went through and made sure that all my subpages are up to date.

So hopefully things can get back to normal around here. I missed you all and am so very thankful for all the support you sent my way. It really means more than you know.